From 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names by Diana Wells:
“The daffodil, for many, is spring itself….
“Describing the daffodils she and her brother William saw on a walk, Dorothy Wordsworth said, ‘Some rested their heads on these stones as on a pillow.’ This is good to remember when looking at daffodils after a storm: they are simply resting their heads. Dorothy noted that the daffodils ‘tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, they looked so gay and glancing.’ One can’t help wondering if William read her diary before writing his famous poem and wandering lonely as a cloud.”
From “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” in Selected Poetry of William Wordsworth, edited by Mark Van Doren:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Today we have more flowers, and fewer words … Thanks for taking a look!
I love daffodils, always can’t wait to see ’em very spring. It’s also amazing to see them come up year after year, out in the country, or even in the woods, where a farmhouse has been gone so long, you can hardly make out the foundation. The poem is a real classic, too.
Yeah, they’re pretty cool. It wasn’t until I started photographing them at the cemetery that I realized how many variations there were; I was more accustomed to the “standard” yellow ones rather than those with unique shapes, or combinations of colors. I just bought the book “Daffodil: The Remarkable Story of the World’s Most Popular Spring Flower” by Noel Kingsbury to learn more about them. Kingsbury is also the author of “Garden Flora” — one of my favorite books about flowers and gardens.
Going over this weekend to see if there are any left; mostly we are past daffodil season here already but some of the more exotic ones may still be blooming.
Thanks for the comment!